Note: Among the emerging branches of jurisprudence that are referred to under titles such as contemporary jurisprudence, system jurisprudence, or…, some, such as economic and political jurisprudence, have a longer history and have a suitable research background, and some, such as environmental jurisprudence, are still living like a newborn child. Meanwhile, Hijjat lslam wal Muslimin Muh. Kazem Haqqani Fadl, the director of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Jurisprudence, believes that what has caused the infancy of environmental jurisprudence is the environment in which the science of jurisprudence lives. This interesting and readable note from this teacher of higher levels at the Qom Seminary is as follows:

The knowledge of jurisprudence, as a knowledge that is responsible for regulating the actions of those who are obligated, actually seeks to regulate human behavior. This systematization finds meaning in four overlapping aspects, which are the relationship between man and God, the relationship between man and himself, the relationship between man and others, and the relationship between man and nature. According to the Islamic worldview, divine commands have been issued with the aim of harmonizing these four aspects and in line with human perfection. The relationship between man and nature is studied today in the form of environmental issues. The elements that form the environment, such as water, air, soil, plants, animals, and the like, have also been considered in Islamic jurisprudence, and sometimes rulings have been made on them. These issues are included in several chapters of jurisprudence, such as the prohibition of polluting and poisoning water and uprooting trees in wars, which is included in the chapters on jihad in jurisprudential books. However, none of the famous jurisprudential books, whether Shi’i or other Islamic schools, has a dedicated chapter on environmental issues, just as there is nothing called environmental hadith in hadith books.

The issues that jurists consider are sometimes purely religious issues, such as prayer and fasting, and the like, and sometimes they are issues that believers deal with in their daily lives, such as eating, drinking, sexual relations, buying and selling, and the like, which the Lawgiver has directly commented on. In dealing with these issues, jurisprudential knowledge is considered a foundational knowledge and explains itself, the subject, its ruling, and its requirements.

There are also some issues that are not directly present in the text of the Qur’an and hadith, nor do they have a continuous connection with the aforementioned issues, but are present in daily life. The questions of believers to jurists pave the way for these issues to enter the circle of jurisprudence. The number of these unforeseen issues in the modern era is expanding. Some of these issues are fundamentally new and newly created; such as many technological tools or new therapeutic and medical methods that are the result of the growth of empirical knowledge in the modern era. In this part of the issues, the knowledge of jurisprudence does not play a founding role and is merely a consumer and follower. Jurisprudence is only responsible for expressing the ruling and cannot interfere in the creation, definition or limitation of the issue.

Another group of questions facing jurists is born from the inevitable conflicts of human life; whether conflicts between the issues of the first group or the issues of the second group. But the important point is that some of these conflicts and overlaps could not have arisen and emerged in the pre-modern era.

It seems that the environmental issue is one of the problems that is the result of development after the industrial revolution and the interference of different areas of human life, such as the destruction of forests or the air pollution of a city of several million people. Before the development of technology, humanity did not have the ability to use and consume nature destructively. What has happened in the modern world; namely, the expansion of the population and the greater need for natural resources and the growth of technology and the incredible speed of using these resources, could not have been predicted even in the early days of the modern era; because human knowledge and experience did not have the ability to foresee such a future. Although it is possible to imagine problems that could have been realized; but it was not possible for humans to notice them; such as the extinction of certain species of animals or plants, which due to the lack of communication and limited life of humans, no one could know how many of each animal is alive? And whether a specific animal is facing extinction or not? Islamic jurisprudence in this area should also be considered a “following” science that cannot predict issues. Rather, it is the events of life that create these issues and place them before the Mukallafun, Muqalladun, and jurists.

That is why we cannot expect jurists to have included a chapter called the chapter on the environment in organizing the knowledge of jurisprudence, although Islamic narrations contain recommendations on how to treat animals, plants, or water, and the like, but the level of these narrations is not necessarily something called the environment.

In fact, jurisprudence, fundamentally, looks at the world from the perspective of human life; because its subject is the actions of the obligated. Jurisprudence even examines the rights of the obligated from the perspective of duty. Therefore, it is not possible to find a chapter in it whose subject is water, plants, animals, air, technology, machines, or any other subject that is not directly related to humans and their behaviors.

Another point that can be considered an obstacle to the formation of environmental jurisprudence is the originality of permissibility. According to the fundamental principles of Islamic jurisprudence, humans are free to use divine gifts. The limits of this freedom are the rights of others, harm to oneself or others, or the primary sanctity of some of these gifts. The interference with the rights of others in the small world in which the ancients lived was so small and limited that it did not require the establishment of new knowledge or the addition of a new section to jurisprudence. It was the expansion of communications and globalization that made humanity aware of the destructive effects of its encounter with nature and the environment.

The knowledge of jurisprudence, on the other hand, is based on a specific type of theology, the output of which is a lack of attention to the environment. In Islamic theology, God created nature in an orderly, purposeful way, for man, in line with man’s needs, and sufficient for these needs, and if any shortcomings are observed in some times and places, it is due to the oppression of the oppressors or a divine test or the punishment of the actions of the believers. God is aware of the needs of man today and tomorrow and has created the world based on this awareness. This theological support can be the basis for inattention to the environment; and creation will give you all that is on earth. In this theological view, man’s destructive power over nature was ignored, and it was believed that God, who guarantees man’s sustenance, would himself supernaturally prevent the destruction of natural resources.

In summary, several main factors can be identified, including: a theology that believed that nature would not be destroyed except by the direct will of God, the centrality of the obligated human being in jurisprudence, the limitation of the use of natural resources to the subsistence of small populations, the inability to be aware of the impact of widespread occupation on the environment, and the fact that all environmental problems arose centuries after the time of the Lawgiver, have created an environment for jurisprudence in which the absence of a chapter on “environment” seems natural.

This article is part of the file “Principles of Environmental and Natural Resources Jurisprudence” and will be prepared and published in collaboration with the Ijtihad Network.